Reanimation
by yodapopper
Summary: With Science once again grinding to a halt, GLaDOS finds herself in dire need of a new test subject. Who better than a recently-deceased lunatic? Of course, said lunatic is neither nearby nor breathing, but that can be arranged. After all, she has always wanted to try and reanimate the dead...
1. Chapter 1: Reanimation

So, well, I probably shouldn't be starting yet _another_ story, even if I don't think this has as much length potential as the two big ones I'm currently working on. I should probably be focusing on those, not to mention all the schoolwork which is supposed to get done in just a bit over a week. The story is already written though, so there was no point in _not_ publishing it. Thus, here it is.

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Reanimation**

Her supply of test subjects had run out. Again.

That was the unfortunate fact that the resident Central Core, caretaker and ruler of Aperture, prime forwarder of Science and most intelligent being on the planet, now had to face. With her last supply in the entire facility vanishing in a panic-stricken attempt to chase off that horrific bird and the Cooperative Testing Initiative proving to ultimately be an utter failure to science, she was running out of options, and fast.

She needed a new approach. Artificial Intelligence was a no-go – either they were reassembled with their memories –causing them to never make the same mistake twice and thus proving nothing save that the test can be solved, the very issue which ruined the Cooperative Testing Initiative– or they would be reassembled without them, causing them to perform the exact same error again and again, as they could never rule out the approach doomed to fail.

Ruling out AIs meant she needed living subjects, Humans to be more specific, which left her with several problems. For one, they tended to run out quickly, courtesy of their natural fragility, the full extent of which she had only recently discovered. Secondly, they tended to lack motivation, being reluctant or even outright refusing to test. Aside from one, that is… but the lunatic was probably far out of Aperture's reach by now, having been 'released' over three weeks ago.

Really, though, what options did she have? Sure, there were other humans up on the surface, but since a certain… incident, they were scarce, and not exactly trusting of technology. Not to mention, probably armed with weapons that, whilst not up to Aperture's standards, would still pose a problem even if she were to send a few robots to capture them. That was if she could even find them. They would be problematic, no matter how she approached the issues.

Ultimately, she supposed that it couldn't hurt to check the lunatic's status.

Oh.

Dead.

Life signs non-existent. No blood flow, breathing or brain activity. Somewhat decomposed, otherwise intact. Yes, short of the small monitoring device implanted into all Aperture test subjects having malfunctioned, there was absolutely no doubt that the lunatic was deceased.

How ironic. The little subject survives all trials Aperture can throw at her, causes the second greatest disaster in the facility's history (though the Moron was only barely cutting ahead of her there, and to some extent that mess could _also_ be blamed on her), only to drop dead by what appears to have been an urgent lack of di-hydrogen-oxide, in layman's terms known as death by dehydration, or lack of water.

Ah well, she _had_ been wishing to try and reanimate the dead, and now that there was –for once– a corpse available which wasn't dissolved, riddled with bullet holes like Swiss cheese (because yes, the Swiss cheese Aperture manufactured _did_ in fact get its holes inserted via bullets), crushed beyond recognition or turned into ash in the incinerator she supposed that she had found her opportunity.

The Cooperative Testing Initiative's pair of marshmallows were then sent to retrieve the corpse, as GLaDOS began the process of creating the technology for what she was about to do, in a scientific way of course. No Voodoo or other, ridiculous methods here.

Still, as the bots returned with their cargo (being sent back out to gather more humans, live ones if possible), and the technology was still far from done, she realized that this might very well take a _long_ time.

Such a timeframe later, weeks had passed, one round of 'retrieved' subjects had been spent (with the second of four specimens having arrived less than an hour ago), and Aperture's queen could very possibly have found the solution she had been looking for. Getting the lunatic (who had already been injected with the required H2O for her to avoid suffering from immediate dehydration) into position in a test chamber-style relaxation chamber, she prepared to inject her newly created Aperture Science Self-Replicating Rejuvenation Nanites into the subject's dormant blood veins. It was time to wake the dead.

* * *

At first, there were no thoughts. There was only existence. Even such a simple thing sent ecstasy coursing through her entire being, though she couldn't seem to recall why. As her being woke once more, the memories slowly started to re-emerge from the long-dead recesses in her mind. She had been… outside. It had been… beautiful; the ceiling was so high it couldn't be seen, and plants were everywhere. It had seemed endless, and she had wished to see every single part of it, but she had been thirsty, oh so very thirsty. It had been too much; a headache without equal, and she could take it no more. Even the memory was painful to recall; the endless fields had possessed absolutely nothing drinkable, and the powerful light overhead –the sun, was it?– had relentlessly kept on shining through the days.

To talk about the sun, she couldn't feel its shine. Had it descended beneath the horizon? No, it was too warm for that – it would usually be much colder once the light ceased to shine, for some odd reason. She had felt it before (hadn't she?), in the depths of the earth. There had been little light, and little heat – the two had to be connected, somehow.

Then, if she was not within the sun's realm, where was she?

With gargantuan effort, she mentally reached for her eyelids, pulled them open… and immediately closed them again as strong, white light shone her straight in the eyes. She unconsciously frowned. That… was far too bright.

Now that she had once more made contact with her physical being, her senses started to return to her. Her mouth, her entire being even, felt dried-out, almost like she had been in the incinerator room for too long, except without the excessive heat. Yet… she didn't feel thirsty in the same way she had. The headache was, to her great relief, gone.

Her sense of smell came next. There was something… clinical over the air in the area, like it was far too clean. It smelt sterilized, though there were some traces of an odd smell she couldn't quite seem to place. Furthermore, she could feel a quite weak, yet fairly noticeable smell of decay. She didn't like it.

Touch had surprisingly little to report. It mostly felt numb, inactive, like when one has sat in too hard a place for too long and thus temporarily lost the feeling in their rear, though if this case was temporary or not she did not know. All she knew was that, right now, her sense of touch wasn't telling her much, if anything, save for the fact that she currently laid on her back.

Then finally, there was her hearing. It was far more active – she could hear a myriad of noises, from faint beeps and the sound of mechanical movement to a muffled voice in the background which seemed familiar, somehow.

Yet, there was something… off with everything. Deep within her, something didn't feel right. At all. There was something very _wrong_ going on, something that did not feel natural in the least.

Before she could figure out what the wrong thing was, however, she suddenly felt a shock to her side. Her head flew up, her eyes shot open and she let out a ferocious snarl as her upper body swiftly rose through instinct. Her head slammed into something hard and she fell back down into her first position, but she barely felt it.

"Subject reacts to electric discharges. Brain activity stable. Life signs continuously low. The second phase is a moderate success" the familiar voice said, as the 'subject' waited for her eyes to adjust to the light around her.

She knew this place. The crisp white panels working in perfect synchronisation with their grey siblings, the blinding lights, the yellow one with the oh-so-familiar voice staring down at her from a large construction hung from the ceiling. She could only be in one place, _that_ place. Why in the world was she here, of all places? She'd left it behind, had she not? She was sure she had but… had she?

Her heart didn't beat twice at the possibility of it all having been a dream. In fact, she couldn't feel it beating at all. She inhaled sharply, taking her first lungful of air in weeks, as she began to notice the things which were far from right. Her heart wasn't beating, her lungs only acted when she commanded it, her eyes had been staring for the last half a minute without feeling even the slightest need to blink, and GLaDOS was but a few meters to her left. What in the world had the AI done to her?

"Oh good, you're awake" the AI in question said, looking her over through a glass covering, which had until then gone unnoticed by the test subject in its position as the top of the whatever-it-was she was in. That must have been what her head collided with just moments ago.

Lifting her head up again, she turned her gaze towards herself, taking in her own appearance. The sight wasn't pleasant. She still wore the very same, orange Aperture jumpsuit she had been wearing for the entire span of her memory, though by now it was torn, dirty to the point where it wasn't really orange anymore, and it generally lacked the appearance it once had. However, what it didn't cover was even worse. Pale, grey skin greeted her sight, giving the appearance of a corpse, and to be honest, that was about the way she felt right about now. The only thing on her entire person which didn't look decayed (assuming her hair didn't miraculously survive unscathed from whatever had caused the rest of this mess) was probably her trusted long-fall boots (remaining a crisp, clean white as if they had barely been used at all), the second most important item she'd ever had, where the Portal gun itself probably took the cake.

Huh. Cake. Well, seems she could still do a pun if needed, even if she couldn't recall ever tasting the substance herself. Wonder what a pun would taste like…

Odd train of thought. You can't eat a pun. That, at least, she knew very well. Unless Aperture had somehow managed to make edible puns, but that was a plainly ridiculous (though admittedly amusing) thought.

'No! Concentrate!' she told herself, reminding her mind, quite harshly, that she was currently inside some odd container, in the middle of Aperture, with a certain, giant robot staring down at her. She had to get out of this position.

Said and done, she mentally grabbed a hold of her arms, told them to move, and watched as they rose, pushing against the glass with whatever strength the grey, withered limbs could muster.

It didn't do a thing, save draw attention. Six seconds later, her observer seemed to decide that she had been trying (futilely) for long enough, and began the next 'phase'.

"Testing remote nanite shutdown protocols..." the yellow-eyed, vastly intelligent construct said, and Chell started to feel strange. As if she were dying within. Regrettably, it didn't stay a mere feeling for long. Her arms collapsed back into a resting position, beyond her control, and she started to quite litterally _lose_ her body. Not lose as in 'physically remove', but rather more of a 'lose all control and senses related to it' kind of way. Meanwhile, her thoughts started to fade, lessening in strength and numbers alike. Within seconds, she had completely ceased to feel her legs, and her arms soon met a similar fate. With her eyelids growing as heavy as if each one weighed as much as a whole test chamber, her thoughts disappearing until practically none remained and everything below her neck lost to her, there was nothing she could do. The last thoughts in her mind faded, her eyes closed and her head fell back, as dead as the rest of her body.

* * *

Think I'm cutting it there. More events will have to wait for eventual future chapters.

Also, there is now a minor update added in to fix a slight error.

Hope you enjoyed. Comments and reviews are appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2: Back in testing

Well, this is embarassing. Usually, when I start a multi-chapter story, I aim to always release the second chapter pretty much exactly one week after the first came out. Yeah... that didn't go so well. School intervened, wishing to have a whole load of tests which put me out of time to write anything worthwhile for a few weeks. I'll just hope that it doesn't get this bad again any time soon.

Regardless, here's chapter two. Hope you enjoy. Test-solving is kind of hard to make truly interesting, but I hope I did a good job.

* * *

 **Chapter 2: Back in testing**

Waking up felt... odd. Slow. Not at all like the comparatively sudden awakening that she had grown used to during her life. It took far too long for her mind to reorganize into something beyond mere existence which, whilst a comfortable sensation, she regretted lingering in once she found out where, exactly, she was.

An Aperture test chamber, within which one could find the pod she was currently sealed in. She was back in testing. What had happened? She knew she had awoken once before, in the central chamber, feeling like a corpse, but then the central core –GLaDOS– had done _something_ ; she had felt a truly odd sensation, lost control over her own body, and then... there was nothing. Her mind was blank. Now she was here, with no memory of being moved; she must have fallen into unconsciousness. For how long, she did not know, and it probably did not matter. Within the tests' stark-white (and gray) walls, concentrating too much on anything but the moment and the immediate future (as in, how to solve the test without dying) would only get you killed – she had been in enough close calls to figure that out.

Without warning, her pod's glass covering suddenly slid away, allowing her access to the entirety of the chamber she was currently in. Despite having to struggle for almost a minute before the entirety of her body (or, well, most of it – her toes were still not cooperating) once more heeded her command, she valiantly managed to rise from her resting position and stand up on unsteady legs on the chamber floor, held upright mostly by the merit of her long-fall boots' capability in such matters. In the background, the by now very familiar, female voice of a certain AI made its appearance, congratulating her for "successfully figuring out how to perform basic bipedal movement".

Then, of course, she remarked on the fact that, normally, humans achieve this within a few years' age, and that Chell herself was far older than said age, obviously a pointer towards "you really should have figured this out sooner if you were on level with average human intelligence (which is still very stupid, by the way)". She was being mocked already – how typical. Seems like they were back in old habits already.

She looked around. The chamber consisted of four clear, see-through glass walls, a toilet which someone had apparently forgotten to close the lid of, a portable wall was present on one of the sides in a bit of the glass' stead, and there was a hole next to it obviously meant for firing out the second one, there was a table on which a portal gun lay, and then there-

wait, portal gun!

Rushing forward, her hands reached out for the portal gun, grabbed it, and she relished in the comforting feeling it brought, as she held it in her usual position. It took a few seconds before she noticed the differences. The gun was polished white with a pair of green stripes and completely lacked the scars of her earlier ventures – this wasn't _her_ portal gun! Of course, that one had been launched into space (at least, she hadn't seen it around since the moon event), but some part of her had still held on to the immature, naïve hope that she would find her own portal gun, were she to ever return within Aperture's walls again.

Well, at least she had _a_ portal gun; hopefully she'd get to avoid Wheatley-style moronity tests (really, all the first one tested was the subject's own moronity), also known as 'warmup-tests' that one would see with the single-portal device, and go straight to the part where it was possible for an escape route to reveal itself. At least, she hoped one would, but GLaDOS would probably have learned from her earlier ventures by now. Telling herself that there was no escape would just lead her to her death, though; there _would_ be an escape route, end of discussion.

With the practiced ease that came with dozens of tests' worth of experience with the portalling device, she fired two portals and, true to her aim, two holes in the fabric of space emerged, which she noted to be differently colored compared to her old ones. Passing through the forest-green portal in her chamber, she emerged through the lime-green one on the outside, and began to move towards the main chamber's exit. It opened as it was meant to, revealing the first of what was sure to be many an elevator behind the obligatory fizzler field.

The ride was shorter than usual as, by all appearances, the elevator room she arrived in was litterally stacked on top of the previous one, in a way that suggested that the previous chamber was only a few meters down.

Giving the built-in elevator camera a 'really?' look (why would you even need an elevator for such a short ride in the first place?), Chell stepped out as the glass doors receded, and she subsequently made her way up the room's stairs as GlaDOS babbled on about 'protocol'. Passing by the big sign reading '01', below which a warning for the blue gel was lit, she entered the test.

At a glance, the first test seemed simple enough, and completely devoid of any dangers. At least it wasn't so easy as to make it a 'whoever-made-this-was-an-idiot' test, either, so she had that. After taking a quick look around, she knew its layout, and already had a solution in mind.

The test consisted of two large buttons littered around the test's surface area, one connected to a fizzler field blocking a portable surface near the ceiling, the other wired up to an inactive, blue gel pipe surrounded by portable walls on several sides. The pipe released a slow drip of repulsion gel when triggered. There was also a door, out of walking reach, safely nestled within an alcove in the wall, and in another corner, to the left of the door's side, there was a row of portable walls by ground level.

Solving it didn't take long. Step one: trigger the gel and make sure that at least some of the floor area near it is covered. Step two: trap a drop of repulsion gel in a loop for a moment, using the portable walls near the pipe. Step three: launch said drop via the row of portable surfaces, so that the floor just beneath where the alcove begins gets covered in gel. Step four: stand on the fizzler-related button and fire a portal on the portable surface the fizzler covers. Step five: move back to the gel pipe, jump on the previously spread-around goo, fire the other portal beneath oneself and fly through it.

After following her plan to the letter, she found herself flying through the air, somewhat crashing into the wall on the other side, bouncing on the gel there, and then flying up to the ground by the exit. Ouch. That collision had not been part of the plan; she could feel minor pain in her left hand, as it had taken the brunt of the impact. Still, she was practically on the exit's doorstep now – out she walked, heading across the floor and out the door. That is the moment that the facility's ruler decided to make her voice heard yet again.

"You appear to remain proficient with the Aperture Science Hand-held Portal Device, despite your death. Did you know that 99.9% of all test subjects are unable to use their Aperture Science Hand-held Portal Device after they die?"

The test subject stopped, turned, and threw a disbelieving, sceptical glare at the camera situated above the doorframe – the AI was seemingly keeping more 'eyes' on her than usual. Still, dead? She was obviously not dead, as she was able to react to the statement; did the AI run out of things to say, thus ending up with stealing that purple-eyed fact core's inane 'facts'?

That didn't sound like the GLaDOS she knew. However, the prospect of her actually telling the truth was even more absurd. Admittedly, absurd was practically Aperture's middle name, and it _would_ explain a number of those oddities she had felt whilst waking up (which she still felt (nope, still no heartbeat, and when was the last time she actually breathed?)) but honestly, this was probably just another one of GLaDOS' typical schemes to try and break her mentally. Aperture's current central core seemed to occasionally have that habit, when testing was going on.

"Oh, you don't _know_ , do you?" she asked, rhetorically, before chuckling ominously.

Though a bit odd, and perhaps somewhat creepy had Aperture not already made her practically immune to that, Chell decided to simply wave the comment off as GLaDOS being GLaDOS before entering the elevator, continuing on undeterred.

* * *

The elevator ride was utterly eventless. Nothing of significance took place.

Passing through the open elevator doors, Chell was greeted by GLaDOS' usual banter, casually telling her that "This next test involves the Aperture Science Projected Non-Solid Anti-Gravity Displacement Tube, or Excursion Funnel for short. You remember those, don't you? The long, blue funnels blatantly _stolen_ from _me_ by the equally blue, utterly idiotic moron." She sounded a bit bitter there, at the end. Perhaps she hadn't quite gotten over that so-called ' _disaster_ ', after all.

With the AI waving the whole thing off with a simple "Anyways, back to testing", Chell glanced at the '02' test-sign, seeing the Excursion Funnel, Faith Plate, Cube Dropper, Don't-get-hit-in-the-head-by-the-cube and Laser warnings highlighted, before she entered the test itself.

It soon became clear that yes, the AI had definitely foregone the warmup tests. Whilst the chamber was clear of anything that would directly threaten her life, it was not exactly the simplest of tests, but she was a seasoned veteran of test-solving by now. Not a challenge.

The first thing that happened was that a laser-redirecting cube fell down almost straight in front of her; looking up, there was a dropper in the ceiling. Looking around, she subsequently spotted the exit, which was almost at the top of the test's fair height (to the right, as seen from the entrance) with a large glass pane beneath it, assumingly for foothold purposes. Near it, closer to the center, the two top 'layers' were separated by a fizzler-field. The right wall possessed two protrusions, each one in turn possessing one of those laser triggers of the kind which did not stop the laser (both connected to the door) and there appeared to be a standard-issue weight-triggered button on top of the right one, which linked to the fizzler.

To the right of her, built into the chamber's non-portable floor, there was a faith plate which, when stepped on, sent here on a flight path straight through the formerly-mentioned fizzler field, landing neatly on the glass next to the door. In addition, down at the chamber's floor, an Excursion Funnel (which she had just learnt the name of) sent its blue funnel straight up through the entire chamber into a section of portable wall in the ceiling, and most of the lower chamber's walls were of the white kind, allowing her to move the funnel around down there with her portals. Finally, there was a pedestal button mounted on the wall next to the exit, connected to the funnel.

Jumping back down, she let her portal gun's own carrying capability grab a hold of the redirection cube and, placing two portals, one next to her and the other within jumping distance of the button, she leapt through the air, landing on the button in question and thus shutting down the fizzler above her.

Leaving the reflection cube aimed at her portal on the wall, Chell leapt down and prepared for the next part of her test-solving plan, stepping into the blue, upwards-pointing funnel for the sake of getting a better overview of her task.

...And then the entire chamber went dark. The lights turned off, the funnel shut down, the laser turned off and everything generally went silent. Falling back to the complex piece of machinery mounted in the floor, which would usually ensure the funnel's continued existence, Chell looked around in a vain attempt to try and see what had happened. Last time, it had been Wheatley, but she had probably seen the last of that little, blue-eyed core back during her visit to the moon.

The announcement system seemed to appear functional, though, since a certain AI's voice rang out loud and clear through the chamber but a moment later. The words: "Oh. There appears to have been an overload. The Excursion Funnel required more power than what the system could handle, in order to perform its duties. Hold on, I'll put in a second power line." were spoken clearly, and the obvious receiver did not miss the hint. Just a moment after she walks into the funnel, said funnel, according to Her, suddenly requires more power than what the surely immensely capable Aperture grid could handle.

No, she wasn't fat, despite the AI's stubborn insistence that the truth lay elsewhere. Really, if one were to look at her, she did look like someone abnormally skinny by now, or at the very least not above a healthy weight. She had heard one too many of those 'fat' jokes by now; honestly, she was tired of them, and would much prefer if there could just be some form of new humour by now, preferably not at her own expense. Just to lighten the place's general atmosphere.

Another ten seconds later, the lights, fizzler, funnel and everything else came back on all at once, accompanied by GLaDOS' "There we go, you should be able to waggle through the rest of the test now", allowing the test to continue despite the minor insult. At least, it seems, that part of GLaDOS hadn't changed – taunting her subjects would probably always be a part of her testing habits. Besides, the insults could be rather amusing at times, though this was perhaps not one of those cases.

Skipping the 'overview' idea entirely, she stepped onto the ground-bound faith plate, and flew up to the exit. From there, she pressed the nearby pedestal button before firing her light-green portal, the one not next to the redirection cube, at the funnel's end, and watched in satisfaction as the cube retracted through it by the funnel's own force, turning around a few seconds later when the pedestal button's timer ran out. From there, she moved the aforementioned portal to be on level with the laser beneath her, distant enough from the laser catchers as to avoid collisions, and so the cube soon found itself redirecting the laser into the funnel.

Carefully moving the portal a little to the right at a time, just enough to force the cube to slide the same way without causing a fall or making it rotate, the funnel side of the slowly but surely began to 'clip' through the protruding panels near the wall. As the cube finally slid close enough as for the laser to go through the catchers, rather than next to it, said catchers activated and the door behind her slid open. As she turned, moving out of the now-solved room, she could hear the panels' efforts, which were tirelessly resisting the funnel's incessant pull – they were not meant to be dragged out into the funnel's centre, and thus would use their power to resist the funnel's own.

She passed through the fizzler in the exit, relieving the panels of their struggle against the funnel, and walked towards the elevator with steady and self-confident steps. Well, at least as much like it as her body, which oddly was a bit slower than she was used to, would permit.

Entering the elevator, the doors closed… and it did not move.

"The elevator is apparently experiencing an error" a certain AI noted. "[Subject Name Here], please stand by. An Aperture Science Rocket-Propelled Elevator Booster will arrive shortly."

Hold on, rocket-propelled? That didn't seem sa- the subject thought, and then suddenly the elevator shot up with several times its normal speed; merely through her boots' services was she able to remain standing, and even then it was by no means a comfortable experience. Of course, the moon had been worse by far, but that did not make this any better.

It eventually levelled out, after a few seconds, bringing much-welcome relief against the obtrusive G-forces. The elevator stopped, its doors opened, and the woman inside stumbled out. One thing was for certain: Aperture wouldn't go light on her this time either. She expected it, though, and thus, eyes steely with the determination to survive, she kept going. Even if escape took her a million years, she would _never_ give up.

* * *

A/N: Well, there's the end of the chapter. Something I usually do when writing a portal fic taking place within the confines of the tests, is to actually create the chambers in Portal 2's own editor first, as to make sure that the test is actually proper and solvable by normal means. Of course, it's not always an identical replica, not only since I cannot realistically bother to put in my own, personalized sound files to fit in GLaDOS' voice (or add in any other events, for that matter), and in the case that an element not present in the editor is required, I might have to use a best-fit instead. Still, I'll probably have the test chambers popping up on steam during the writing process, named at least in part after the fic itself.

Regardless, comments and reviews are appreciated. That also means that you are free to criticise and, yes, even flame – if I get them, I have obviously deserved them, though I would prefer if you would not simply say, for example, "this story is bad" without giving me any reasons. If I do not know why, I cannot fix the issue, now can I?


End file.
